The
man who wrote Be As You Are talks about
his life, his work, and his two new books.

David
Godman is best known for his anthology of Ramana
Maharshi's writings, Be As You Are, which
has become the standard single-volume reference
on the great sage's teachings. But few people
know that David has written nine other books,
and each one is equally remarkable in its own
way. Two of these books have just come out, providing
a good excuse for an interview. Since David lives
in Tiruvannamalai and the editor of this website
lives in New York, the interview was conducted
by e-mail.

You
have just brought out two new books on Ramana
Maharshi. Can you tell me something about them?

In
the late 1980s I began to collect first-person
accounts by people who had spent time with Ramana
Maharshi. It was my intention to make an anthology
of accounts that hadn't been published before.
To find original material I did extensive research
on books that had appeared in various Indian languages
but not in English. I also found some good material
written in English that had never been published.

At
some point during this research I went to see
Annamalai Swami, a devotee of Sri Ramana who had
moved intimately with him for many years. His
account proved to be so interesting and so long,
I ended up doing a whole book just about him.
Then I went to Lucknow to interview Papaji. His
story fascinated me so much, I spent four years
in Lucknow and eventually wrote a massive 1,200
page biography. The original project got put on
the back burner, and I only came back to it about
a year ago.

I
have changed my original criteria. I am now using
some material that has been published before.
However, since most of this material is rarely
sold outside India, I think non-Indian readers
of these books, even devotees of Sri Ramana, will
find that most of the material is new to them.

What
made you decide to take this particular approach
to Sri Ramana?

Sri
Ramana is all things to all people. There is no
standard Ramana Maharshi who is the same for all
people. People who approached him brought their
minds with them, and Bhagavan, being a non-person
with no mind of his own, magnified and reflected
back all this incoming mental energy. So, different
people saw him and experienced him in many different
ways.

If
I wanted to write about Sri Ramana myself, I would
have to put my own editorial overlay on top of
all these differing experiences and impressions.
So, I thought, "Let people speak for themselves.
Let people explain who their particular Ramana
is."

David's
new books are calledThe Power of the Presence
parts one and two.(A third
volume is on its way.)

There
is a fictional detective, Hercule Poirot, who
appears in many of Agatha Christie's books. In
one story, when he was completely stuck, he just
started talking to everyone who was involved,
and spent many hours just listening to what they
had to say. Poirot's theory was, "If you
let people talk about themselves for long enough,
sooner or later they give themselves away."

This
was my approach. I didn't want to edit or shorten
anyone's story. On the contrary, I wanted to make
it as detailed as possible. So, I just let them
talk and say what they wanted to say. If you give
someone thirty pages to talk or write about their
relationship with Sri Ramana, they have to reveal
who they are in a very intimate way. This was
my aim: to have a gallery of intimate portraits
of Sri Ramana, each one drawn lovingly by a person
who had a personal and very unique perspective
on this great being.

Sri
Ramana Maharshi

Could
you describe one of your favorite sections from
either of these books?

When
I made the first drafts of some of these chapters
back in the 1980s, I circulated copies to all
my friends in Tiruvannamalai. I asked everyone
to give marks out of ten on how interesting they
found each account. Some chapters that were given
ten by one person would get zero from someone
else. This illustrates what I was just saying:
everyone has a different idea of who Sri Ramana
is, and because people relate to him in different
ways, they react differently to stories about
him. My favorites were not so popular with many
of my friends.

It's
fashionable nowadays to be very positive about
one's spiritual experiences. People like to jump
up and down and exclaim, "I'm free! I'm free!"
I prefer the refreshing honesty of a devotee,
Sivaprakasam Pillai, who, after fifty years of
being with Sri Ramana, was still lamenting about
his faults and his lack of progress. This is the
person who first got Bhagavan to record his teachings
on self-enquiry in 1901. I admired his honesty,
his humility and his integrity in admitting that
he still couldn't control his mind. I also enjoyed
some of the teachings of Sri Ramana that were
recorded by Sadhu Natanananda, whose account also
proved to be not too popular with my friends.
This is an extract that I particularly liked:

Be
As You Are, edited by David Godman.

A
certain lady who had a lot of devotion performed
a traditional ritual for worshipping sages whenever
she came into Bhagavan's presence to have darshan.
She would prostrate to Bhagavan, touch his feet
and then put the hands that had touched Bhagavan's
feet on her eyes.

After
noticing that she did this daily, Bhagavan told
her one day, 'Only the Supreme Self, which is
ever shining in your heart as the reality, is
the Sadguru. The pure awareness, which is shining
as the inward illumination "I", is his gracious
feet. The contact with these [inner holy feet]
alone can give you true redemption. Joining
the eye of reflected conciousness [chitabhasa],
which is your sense of individuality [jiva
bodha], to those holy feet, which are the
real conciousness, is the union of the feet
and the head that is the real significance of
the word "asi" ["are", as in the
mahavakya "You are That"]. As these inner
holy feet can be held naturally and unceasingly,
hereafter, with an inward-turned mind, cling
to that inner awareness that is your own real
nature. This alone is the proper way for the
removal of bondage and the attainment of the
supreme truth.'

I
appreciate and applaud anyone who has devotion
to Bhagavan's form, but at the same time I love
the purity of Bhagavan's advaitic response to
this woman.

To
see a longer excerpt from The
Power of the Presence Part One,click
here.

Photo
of Sri Ramana Maharshi copyright Sri Ramanasramam
and others. Used by permission.